What are the different histories of feminist theory? The project poses and reflects on this question in interviews with high-influential international academics such as Joan Wallach Scott, Donna J. Haraway or Londa Schiebinger:
Conversations are carried out with protagonists who had and have a formative influence on feminist theories. In engaging with these scholars, the projekt’s activists wish to delve deeper not only into the ideas and concepts that form the key basis of these theories but also to explore the historical contexts, the collective thinking, political practices and historical controversies that enabled them at the time. The conversations bring forth exigent questions around power, inequality and violence, intersectionality, the relation of sex, gender and sexuality, or the critique of binary thinking. The projects discusses the contributions of feminism into analyzing and challenging significant differences other than gender – such as race, class, nationality, religion, and caste. It is rooted in oral history, philosophical exchange, and feminist traditions of collective thinking. It has value for those of us interested in the history of feminist theory and in feminism as a resourceful way of challenging dominant knowledges and creating different ones. Read more … (Web)
The many futures of gender: Oral Histories of Feminist Theory; Patricia Purtschert (Web)
- Interviews (so far): Linda Martín Alcoff | Joan Wallach Scott | Donna J. Haraway | Margo Okazawa-Rey | Ann Laura Stoler | Londa Schiebinger | Anne Fausto Sterling | Vandana Shiva | Chandra Talpade Mohanty
About this project: We are interested in exploring the historical contexts that enabled the thinking of these pathbreaking feminist scholars at the time. We also want to find out how conversations with other feminists as well as collective strands of thinking and debating shaped the emergence of their work. In these conversations, we trace back the genealogies of thoughts and concepts that they helped to bring forth and map future paths of feminist thinking, including such that address current controversies and burning questions. The conversations bring forth exigent questions around power, inequality and violence, they tackle the relation of sex, gender and sexuality as well as the relation of sex, body and materiality. We discuss the contributions of feminism into analyzing and challenging significant differences other than gender – such as race, class, nationality, religion, and caste and the way they are entangled with each other. Read more … (Web)